The play Trifles and the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” were written by Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was a feminist writer who used her writing talent to illustrate the widespread inequality between the men and women of the time. She wrote the play in 1916 and a year later adapted it into the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”. Glaspell’s inspiration for these pieces was an actual event in which a woman murdered her husband that she had covered when she was a reporter. The themes Susan Glaspell is most concerned with are female oppression, patriarchal dominance, and revenge. At that time in history, society was very much patriarchal. It was a time when women were expected to be quiet and obey and trust their husbands completely. The play and …show more content…
short story gave Glaspell a platform to present her ideas to the nation. While both works are of different genres, Trifles being a drama and “A Jury of Her Peers” a short-story mystery, Glaspell uses both to express herself in the same way. Even though the two pieces are similar in plot, setting and dialogue, they differ in their titles, points of view, and descriptive natures. To begin with, both Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers” basically have the same plot. A husband has been murdered and his wife is the suspect. Although they do not begin at the same location, anything of importance takes place at the Wright farmhouse. A group of three men and two women come together at the crime scene. Each group is there for a different reason. The men’s mission is to uncover any evidence that would prove that the farmer’s wife, Minnie, killed her husband. The women are there only to get some personal items for Minnie to have in prison. In both of Glaspell’s works the men make belittling remarks about the messy condition of the kitchen and how there could be nothing of importance there apparently because that was a woman’s area. Later on one of the male characters even said that women tend to worry over things that are trifling. This is an obvious example of the theme of oppression of women and patriarchal dominance that both works emphasize. Both the play and the short story feature Mr.
and Mrs. Hale, Sheriff Peters and his wife, and Mr. Henderson. The character’s dialogue, for the most part is no different in each story. Though there are similarities in plot, characters, and dialogue, there are differences in the title of each work and the point of view of each work. First, the title Trifles is suggestive that females are of little importance to the men. One of the male characters indicates that women tend to worry about things that are of no consequence. The title also subtly references the fact that women tend to notice the trifling things. This is evident by the fact that the men make fun of the women for wondering about a quilt Minnie was making while the women noticed an uneven square sewn into an otherwise evenly sewn quilt. They used this clue to conclude that the farmer’s wife was nervous about something. Although the title “A Jury of Her Peers” seems to indicate that someone will be judged by a jury in a court, the actual jurors are the farmer’s wife’s peers. The jurors, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, can understand what the farmer’s wife is like because they are her peers. The women empathize with the farmer’s wife and hide incriminating evidence from the men. It is with this action that the women take revenge on the male dominance they must live with each day just as the farmer’s wife took her revenge out on her husband for killing her bird. Another difference is the point of view of each work. Trifles is a one-act drama and the reader must rely on actions of the characters to try to understand each characters point of view while “A Jury of Her Peers” has an omniscient narrator who is able to tell the reader the thoughts of the characters. For example in “A Jury of Her Peers” when Mr. Hale asked Mr. Peters to tell him what happened when he arrived at the house the day before, the narrator gave the reader access to what was going through Mrs. Hales’ mind as her husband gave his account of what
he had observed. The reader had no idea of what she was thinking in the play. One last difference is the descriptive nature of each. Trifles is descriptive when setting up each scene but does not go into the detail that “A Jury of Her Peers” does. One example is when the women discovered the erratic sewing of the quilt square. In the play the women just look at each other and it is up to the reader to decide if there is any significance but in the short story the reader was in the mind of Mrs. Hale and had access to her thoughts as she wondered what the farmer’s wife was conveying with her sloppy sewing. In conclusion, the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” best expresses the themes of female oppression, patriarchal dominance, and revenge. The main reason being the fact that “A Jury of Her Peers”, through its narrative nature, allows the reader to see the character’s thought processes and how the male characters reduce the women to insignificant persons. The women are treated like they are incapable of anything important yet they are the ones to solve the crime. In “A Jury of Her Peers” we are able to understand what the women are thinking as they cover up the evidence which will allow the farmer’s wife to get away with her act of revenge against her husband.
Susan Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, journalist, and actress. She married in 1903 to a novelist, poet, and playwright George Cram Cook. In 1915 with other actors, writers, and artists they founded Provincetown Players a group that had six seasons in New York City between 1916-1923. She is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. She was a pioneering feminist writer and America’s first import and modern female playwright. She wrote the one act play “Trifles” for the Provincetown Players was later adapted into the short shorty “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. A comparison in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” changes the titles, unfinished worked, and
Trifles is written in a third person objective point of view. The text is a play, with narration giving detailed descriptions of the actions done by the characters. For example a description of an action done by a character in Trifles would be “After taking a step forward” (Trifles 709). That narration is describing what the characters are doing and gives the reader a better image of what the characters are doing. “A Jury of Her Peers” has a different point of view, third person limited. The reader is only made aware of the feelings and thoughts of one character. In “A Jury of Her Peers” the only character that has viewable feelings and thoughts is Mrs. Hale, the sheriff’s wife. She is the only character that the reader can see the thoughts of, an example of this is on page one of “A Jury of Her Peers” , “She hated to see things half done…” (Glaspell). Mrs. Hale has had to leave her bread undone and the reader can see that she doesn’t feel comfortable with that. That’s example of third person limited in “A Jury of Her
Virginia Woolf once said,“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” These insightful words, of English modernist and feminist writer, seem a perfect summation of the enduring oppression and silencing of women in society. A paramount theme and notion present in fellow feminist playwright, Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Glaspell’s 1916 one act play explores notions of gender, justice, and freedom; through her command of the English language and rhetoric.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, was written in 1916, reflects the author’s concern with stereotypical concepts of gender and sex roles of that time period. As the title of the play implies, the concerns of women are often considered to be nothing more than unimportant issues that have little or no value to the true work of society, which is being performed by men. The men who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable to solve the mystery through their supposed superior knowledge. Instead, two women are able decipher evidence that the men overlook because all of the clues are entrenched in household items that are familiar mainly to women during this era. Glaspell expertly uses gender characterization, setting, a great deal of symbolism and both dramatic and verbal irony, to expose social divisions created by strict gender roles, specifically, that women were limited to the household and that their contributions went disregarded and underappreciated.
In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, a small number of people are at the Wright house trying to figure out why and how Mr. Wright was murdered. Mrs. Wright is already the suspect, and all that is needed for the case is evidence for a motive. The jury needs something to show anger or sudden feeling so that they can convict her for murder. The men, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Hale are there to find the evidence. The women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, are there to pick up a select few items for Mrs. Wright. While the men are going about business and looking for evidence to build a case against Mrs. Wright, the women are looking over what Mrs. Wright left behind and intuitively trying to understand what happened. They are also trying to fathom why Mrs. Wright would be compelled to perform such an act of violence. As the story goes on, it constructs each of the characters in slightly different means. Susan Glaspell presents Mr. Wright and Mrs. Hale as having contrasting and comparable characteristics. While Mrs. Hale and Mr. Wright differ in terms of emotions, they are similar in their cleanliness and are well respected by others.
The power of women is different than that of men. Women display a subtle and indirect kind of power, but can be resilient enough to impact the outside world. In Trifles, Susan Glaspell delivers the idea that gender and authority are chauvinistic issues that confirm male characters as the power holders, while the female characters are less significant and often weak. This insignificance and weakness indicated in the play by the fact that the women had the evidence to solve a murder, but the men just ignored the women as if they had no value to the case at all. This weakness and inability of the female to contest the man’s view are apparent. According to Ben-Zvi, “Women who kill evoke fear because they challenge societal constructs of femininity-passivity, restraint, and nurture; thus the rush to isolate and label the female offender, to cauterize the act” (141). This play presents women against men, Ms. Wright against her husband, the two women against their spouses and the other men. The male characters are logical, arrogant, and stupid while the women are sympathetic, loyal, and drawn to empathize with Mrs. Wright and forgive her crime. The play questions the extent to which one should maintain loyalty to others. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale try to withhold incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright, and by challenging the reader to question whether
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles Mr. Wright’s murder is never solved because the two women in the story unite against of the arrogance of men to hide evidence that would prove Mrs. Wright as the murderer. The play Trifles is about the death of farmer Mr. Wright and how the town sheriff and attorney try to find evidence that his wife Mrs. Wright killed him. As the play progresses the men’s wives who had come along were discovering important pieces of evidence that prove the men’s theory but chose to hide from them to illustrate the point that their ideas should have been valued and not something to be trifled. The very irony of the play comes from its title trifles and is defined as something that isn’t very important or has no relevance to the situation that it is presented to. In this play the irony of the title comes from the fact that the men find the women’s opinions on the case trifling even though the women solve the crime which ends up being the downfall of the men as they would have been able to prosecute Mrs. Wright if they had listened which made the women’s opinions not trifling. Glaspell was born in an age where women were still considered the property of men and they had no real value in society in the eyes of men except for procreation and motherhood. This attitude towards women was what inspired Glaspell to write the play Trifles and to illustrate the point that women’s attitudes should be just as valued as men’s and to let women have a sense of fulfillment in life and break the shackles that were holding them only as obedient housewives. Trifles was also inspired by a real murder trial that Glaspell had been covering when she was a reporter in the year 1900. Glaspell is a major symbol of the feminist movement of l...
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles a man has been murdered by his wife, but the men of the town who are in charge of investigating the crime are unable solve the murder mystery through logic and standard criminal procedures. Instead, two women (Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters) who visit the home are able to read a series of clues that the men cannot see because all of the clues are embedded in domestic items that are specific to women. The play at first it seems to be about mystery, but it abruptly grows into a feminist perspective. The play Trifles written by Susan Glaspell can be considered a revolutionary writing in it its advocacy of the feminist movement.
Susan Glaspell, from Davenport, Iowa is only the second woman to win a Pulitzer Prize [1]. Much of her writing is strongly feminist, mostly dealing with how society viewed women and the prevalence of male dominance. Possibly, the idea behind the play “Trifles” was based on a woman named Margaret Hosack from Iowa, who is thought to have killed her husband due to his abusive behavior. Susan Glaspell was influenced by this story when writing ‘Trifles’ because she worked at the Des Moines Newspaper at the time of the event and in
Trifles is based on a murder in 1916 that Susan Glaspell covered while she was a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News after she graduated from college. At the end of the nineteenth century, the world of literature saw a large increase of female writers. Judith Fetterley believed that there was an extremely diverse and intriguing body of prose literature used during the nineteenth century by American women. The main idea of this type of literature was women and their lives. The reason all of the literature written by women at this time seems so depressing is due to the fact that they had a tendency to incorporate ideas from their own lives into their works. Glaspell's Trifles lives up to this form of literature, especially since it is based on an actual murder she covered. This play is another look at the murder trial through a woman's point of view.
The film A Jury of her Peers, is similar to the play, Trifles because it highlights similar points that are referenced in the text and is clear it was used as a basis for the foundation of the film. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Wright are changed to Mr. and Mrs. Burke. The use of facts to outline the climax, are the same as used in the play. Such as the building of suspense of the discovering of the bird and its strangulation and whether Mrs. Burke or Mr. Burke is to place blame. However, as an adaptation, opinions are added into the original framework of the play to add a touch of personalization. The film interprets the drama as a murder mystery, as the attorney and the sheriff search the household to find evidence to place blame on Mrs. Burke. A jury of her Peers, works to portray the emotions of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, as they discover items that would, (if found by the men) possibly prove her guilty (Bourne, 2013).
In the play Trifles, Susan Glaspell brings together three women through a crime investigation in the late nineteenth century. Glaspell uses symbolism, contrast of sexes, and well-constructed characters to show that justice for all equally important to finding the truth.
In, “A Jury of Her Peers” it shows the Minnie Wright’s life before she was married. The young Minnie was a lively girl who loved singing in the church choir. Mrs. Hale spoke of how well she dressed and of how pretty her voice was when she sang. Her voice was easily picked out of the choir. Her happiness in youth is in great contrast to the lifestyle she had to mold into after marrying John Wright. The descriptions from both the men and women in this story describe John as a cold, selfish and unsocial man who ended up dragging his wife into his own lifestyle. This smothering among other events is what eventually caused her to snap and change. In the contrast, Minnie Wrights role in “Trifles” play’s is important, even though she is not involved as much in the play. Her absence is because, at the time the play starts, she is detained in jail while Sheriff Peters, the county attorney, the Sheriff's wife, and Minnie's farming neighbors, the Hales, try to connect the dots to determine what exactly occurred the night before at Minnie's house. Learning that Mrs. Wright has changed makes it simpler for the reader to image the state of her image. A woman who no longer wears pretty clothes nor participates in events of interest is likely to allow for signs of aging to begin to show up and for her own beat-down emotions to take over her looks. We can assume that Minnie is a woman who has a
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in